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BarbWire.com: Making the anti-LGBT movement look more extreme by the day

Earlier this year, ridiculously hostile anti-LGBT activist Matt Barber, working in tandem with his employers at the Liberty Counsel, opened a conservative website called BarbWire.com. The site's title is an obvious play on Matt's surname, but it might as well refer to the insults and sneers (or "barbs") for which the nascent site has become known, with the majority (and the worst) of those directed to the LGBT community. Day in and day out, Matt and his team fill the site with the most overheated attacks one can imagine.

There are articles that attempt to make a direct connection between LGBT rights and terrorism, like this one that ran just two days ago:

"The sin and failing of Sodom was always homosexuality and it is a sign in today’s world that Israel and any other nation that gives in to LGBT agenda has passed the mark and is due for God’s intervention.Homosexuals see injustice on every level of society because they are not fully accepted and their normal is seen by most as damaging perversity. They don’t realize that the more their plight becomes accepted as the norm, the closer the rest of the world is in danger of judgment."

The site is not meant to simply push back against LGBT rights or win some sort of political "culture war." Instead, the site represents a clear attempt to make LGBT people seem like a global threat that must be contained or even eradicated. The site loves to suggest that LGBT "tyranny" is going to lead to the ruin and "re-education" of all who oppose:

It is a site designed for dehumanization. And fear. That is a really frightening combo that can pose very dangerous consequences for the marginalized group in the proverbial crosshairs.

When you first look at the site's contributors list, it's no surprise that the tone is so nasty. Bradlee Dean, Bryan Fischer, Janet Porter, Laurie Higgins, Scott Lively, Robert Oscar Lopez, Peter LaBarbera, and Michael Brown all join Matt in contributing to the site. When you couple those names with some of the lesser-known-but-equally-vitriolic activists that Matt has brought in, you have one very obsessive team that clearly has no intention of stopping at just same-sex marriage or inclusive nondiscrimination laws. This is a band of advocates that makes no bones about it: they do not believe LGBT people should even be L, G, B, or T, and they will try their damnedest to make that reality come to light. That's not alarmist talk: that's what they say, in so many words.

But here's the thing: the site also includes contributors who are squarely connected to the very top of the conservative political and media chain. For instance, BarbWire runs Tony Perkins' daily column:

So while it's easy to look at the rhetoric of all of these folks (Perkins and Liberty Counsel included) and write them off as fringe, it's practically impossible to do so. Regardless of how fringe they sound, the sad truth is that there is very little daylight between policymakers who have very real and lasting effect on our lives and this team of anti-LGBT activists who attempt to connect us to pedophiles and Nazis. As LGBT rights victories come faster and become more sweeping, the line between the over-the-top voice and the mainstream pundit seems to be growing thinner and more indistinguishable.

BarbWire.com, while clearly designed to cut us, is actually helping us connect these dots.

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